The wet spot inspector came and left - which sounds like it should be on a t-shirt in an 80s movie. Thankfully, after testing all the places to test, the house is still bone dry, however there is a patch of very soggy soil that will have to be dug up and resurfaced this summer, another unexpected creep to the scope of our little project.
I guess that since we are likely going to get earthmoving equipment in, the driveway will also be added to the list too, as well as replacing the border hedge. It is getting silly.
Luckily, we have cherries to eat.
These are from our garden and are a little unripe,but the birds are getting them first, so we have to be earlier than the early birds. There has also been a couple strawberries devoured, so I grabbed these two so at least we got to taste what we have been growing. The strawberries are fantastic. The cherries are a little tart, but not bad at all and my daughter loved them, since she doesn't mind sour. This was her first time trying cherries and fresh strawberries are also very iffy and since we have to test to see, today is as good a day as any, since if she reacts, it is the weekend.
The inspector seemed like a decent chap and after a little bit, he plucked up the courage to speak English with me and we ended up having a bit of a laugh together as we explored the drainage systems around the house. Normally the workers (even though they speak English fine) don't want to interact much with me, which I assume is because my wife is a little prettier than myself.
He is the same guy who did the original inspection before we bought and was younger than I expected, since I wasn't available the first time. He seemed genuinely interested in his job and curious to work out what was going on. It was refreshing, even though the initial issue, a smell (I didn't smell) remains a mystery. My sense of smell is not as good as my wife's, so while I argued, I deferred to her on this one. Better to be safe than sorry when it comes to mold in homes, as they can cause all kinds of health issues and our daughter already has asthma.
Now we have some scheduling issues and risks though, as the house will start getting painted next week, but where the digging has to happen is pretty close to the walls and that isn't likely to be able to get started before the painting, since we haven't even started looking and booking yet. This is a risk since it really won't be great if the digging work throws mud up against freshly painted walls. We have postponed the painting of the plinth (the bottom bit of the house wall) and are hoping that it is high enough that when they are close to the edge, it doesn't flick up further. I think we might have to hand dig against the wall though.
Again, none of this is ideal, but it is also best to take care of it now, rather than let it sit and wait so that we have a construction site for the next several years on the outside of the house. These changes are going to make quite an extreme difference to the exterior look of the property, so I am going to have to take a lot of pictures to be able to do a before and after, but the after is going to take some time to settle in.
Currently in the summer, not much can be seen from the road as the house is surrounded by a hodgepodge of plants that make up the hedge, but in the winter there are no leaves on them so everything can be seen. We will put in a ceder tree hedge, which takes some time to develop, but should be presentable sometime in 2046. It should look quite nice though, for the retirement years.
The previous owners also dropped by, as they might be liable for some of the costs, since in Finland there is a 5 year period for these kinds of things when selling an old house. It was apparent that they didn't really know what was going on where in the place and were making "guesses" at things - but they definitely don't want to shoulder any of the costs. As expected of course. It was interesting to see them look at what we have done on the outside , but they didn't come in - perhaps once we have finished a lot more, we will invite them around, but they mentioned that they didn't want to come back at all, because they had said their goodbyes and it had been hard. Fair enough
Well, now I have to get onto planning what is going to happen with the drainage system as well as try to do a rough plan of the entire house so I can perhaps do a bit of a render to see what it might look like if we do this, that or the other thing. Pretty soon though, i am going to need to get a third job to cover the costs of all of this - perhaps McDonald's is hiring, as I am pretty bloody sure I can still flip burgers faster than most, even at my age.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
These were shot on an Olympus EM-1 with a 60mm prime macro.